


The Truth is Unimaginable

by StargazingWho



Series: Doctor Who Oneshots [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Children, Coma, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Multiple Doctors (Doctor Who), Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 22:02:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12850410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StargazingWho/pseuds/StargazingWho
Summary: John Basil “the” Doctor Smith was once actually just a telepathic boy in a coma, and his companions and friends were just the other kids in the beds close to him.





	The Truth is Unimaginable

**Author's Note:**

> His “regenerations” are times where he nearly died and had his condition stabilized in just time, or, when he nearly woke up from his coma. His TARDIS represents a life support machine. He’s been in the coma for four months, with four near-death experiences, representing the Doctor’s Ninth to Twelfth incarnations.

Sixteen year old John Basil Smith has no idea what was going on. As the paramedics rush him into the ER, he was drifting in and out of consciousness. After weeks of tests and surgeries, he’s in falling asleep in the hospital, warm in bed, and has no idea what is going on when he enters this new and fantastic dream world. The heart monitor goes off the walls. Doctors and nurses surround John’s police box blue bed and restart his heart.

While he’s in bed, his mind is having adventures with the other girl in the bed across from his. Rose Tyler, who is ten years old and was injured during an earthquake. The Christmas tree fell on her, and she nearly fractured her spine. She’s got a vivid imagination, and he can read her mind from across the room. There’s another boy, Mickey. He comes in a few times every week, for an assortment of things. This room is where he always stays.

Jack Harkness, a teenager who was injured in a schoolyard fight, is a room across from Rose, Mickey, and John’s. He somehow budges his way into these dreamed up adventures, and enjoys them as thoroughly as the younger children do.

When John’s health deteriorates, Rose seems to notice first. The doctors come in and stabilize his condition. That night, in the dream that they share, John is no longer a man wearing a leather jacket. Instead, he’s got sticky-uppy brown hair, a brown pinstripe suit on, a blue shirt, a necktie, and a great brown overcoat with tails.

Jack recovers, but he returns soon after he’s caught in another fight, this time a bullying incident after being seen kissing his boyfriend, Ianto.

Martha Jones and Donna Noble replace Mickey and Rose’s beds. Rose was back on her feet, and visited regularly but never joined in on the dream. She would stand by John’s bed often, and would hold his hand. He could feel it, and he knew it was her, and he wanted to get out of bed, but he just couldn’t. Martha left soon enough, and said that she’d become a doctor when she grew up. Donna soon became the only friend left. She left after a brain injury caused her to have to be moved to a different ward in the hospital.

When John was nearly able to force up enough energy to get back up again, to finally wake up, but he didn’t. Instead, in the dream, he became a tall, gangly boy, with hair that was almost like a girl’s.

This version of himself was uncoordinated and clumsy.

Amelia Pond and Rory Williams, friends since primary school, got into a car accident when their friend River decided to attempt driving without a licence. Rory healed quickly, and Amy took a little longer. When they left, they came back, this time with River, after another mishap.

Rory was set on being a nurse when he grew older. During one of their adventures, Rory and Amy were went back in time by what John called a Weeping Angel. He figured they must’ve left, since they never came back after that day.

In came Clara Oswald, a sixteen year old with a history of self harm and suicide attempts after her mother and best friend’s deaths. She would often stay up late at night and sleep for hours during the day, which became the time when John had the most brain activity. She would come in and out of the hospital, and one day, while she was in, John had another surge of energy. He once again attempted to wake up, but it ended up in both of his kidneys failing on him. The doctors had to perform a kidney transplant on him, or he’d have to be on dialysis twice a week for the rest of his life.

In the dream, he became a grumpy, owl-like Scottish man.

Clara eventually began staying in the psych ward, but John was able to adventure with her just the same. One day, Clara didn’t come back. She died of an overdose of sleeping pills. Her death took John like no other person’s recovery did. She was a best friend, and her life could’ve been so much longer than seventeen years.

When Bill Potts and Nardole (he insisted on being called Nardole, even though his real name was Matt) came along, John had forgotten about Clara. It had been so long, that he dreamed up another version of her. Now, he traveled 1800’s London, Mars, and Mondas, a planet he made up.

He lost Bill when the bullet wound was infected and went septic, and when Nardole lost his three year-long battle to Leukaemia, John was left alone.

Eventually, after all the sadness of losing friends, and realizing that death happened in so many horrible ways, John woke up. He was seventeen years old now, but it had felt like hundreds and hundreds of years that he had been in his coma.

He asked the hospital staff about all these friends he made. He asked if he could visit them. He became friends with Rose. Donna, Jack, Mickey, and Martha also became friends to them. He visited Clara at her grave. A marble tombstone with the epitaph, _“Remember me, for we shall meet again.”_ engraved upon it. Amelia, Rory, and River had moved to New York City together, to find new and exciting things in the Big Apple. When he tried to find them, no body in the entire state seemed to know who Rory Arthur Williams and Amy Jessica Pond were. 

Bill Potts was buried, and Nardole had been cremated. He visited them at their graves as well. Bill’s stone was a granite monument, almost a metre tall, shared with her mother. He visited the site where Nardole’s ashes had been spread. Deep within Scotland, in Cairngorms National Park.

In his perspective, John Basil Smith only survived because of these friends. Had his telepathic powers never existed, and had they not become his friends because of that, he would not have been alive for that final jolt of brain energy to wake up from his coma.

He grew up to become a doctor at the Great Ormond Street Hospital, the same one he recovered in for nearly a year, and a university professor at St. Luke’s University. And now, he’s telling this story to a new generation of students, and a new generation of doctors, nurses, and other people who save lives every day.


End file.
